Oh, and I’d also like to take a moment to excoriate whatever UI designer came up with this:
One of these buttons adds additional ships to the fleet
Another of these buttons gives movement orders to the fleet, drawing an line between it and the destination and back.
I can guarantee that 100% of the time new players mix these buttons up the first 3 dozen times they click on them.
I just plain gave up on those buttons and click through to the individual ships panel and click edit waypoints or transfer ships. Very much agree with you.
This is me as well. I clicked the little button on the leaderboard that declares that I’m ready to quit at least.
The game is also really silly in that if someone trades you three more points of weapons 10 minutes before you land then your ships get that bonus but apparently you can’t assign a lieutenant if the ship is mid flight. So that’s more babysitting because your ships are always in flight, except when you’re waiting to defend.
Thanks for sharing your views.
Remember we specifically made this an “Extra Dark” game with an “Irregular” galaxy, based on what appear to be popular settings in other big games. Without those settings, all systems would be evenly spaced and all players would have complete info. To me, that is more of a board game than a 4X. But its not the game’s fault we picked those settings, by default its totally even and transparent.
I have an opinion in the middle. I do not need to check on the game constantly. I would not interrupt my life for this game. But I can understand the desire to maximize the systems and the compulsion to check all of the time. However, I also realize that by not checking constantly I may not react as quickly, and I may lose. I am OK with that.
One thing I agree with 100% is the fact all parties need to be evenly committed. One player dropping out can pretty much decide the game, because whomever happened to be next to them gets a big advantage.
This is why I propose a turn-based game where all players have the same pool of actions every 12 hours. That is a lot less checking on the game. :-) But it will also go slower. I am OK with that.
I will mark myself as ready to quit in the current real-time game. I will continue to play until everyone else is decided.
I will set up a turn-based game next Saturday. This one ran for one week, we learned a lot, and I am still interested in seeing what the other mode offers. I cannot stay invested into a real time game indefinitely.
I also added the three suggestions I saw above to the game’s suggestions tracker: map sharing (sensor sharing), locking a carriers weapons rating, and the UI tweak.
Thanks!
Has everyone in this thread played Subterfuge that was out several years ago. Heh, make that six years. ago.
We had a few QT3 games of that back then.
It was very similar to this game, and despite still needing to babysit, I found it more dynamic. You had a variety of tactics to avoid the trench warfare I found myself in the last game.
Unfortunately, I can’t remember what they were. I just remember one game where I had like one fleet left, but still tore up half the galaxy before the other team finally eliminated me.
Well that was sort of fun! I was surprised that I ended up being second worst! I thought I was doing pretty well lol! I didn’t like the lack of galaxy info. I was pretty much boxed in by three other players and had no idea what was going on in the rest of the galaxy. That made it hard to decide who to attack. I ended up attacking belouski who was actually much larger than me! lol The real time nature also made it hard to keep away from the game. I’d much more prefer a Dominions type game where you have a certain amount of time to do your turn and once you’re done you can just move on with life.
:sadface:
I had a good expansion before bumping into fishdish, bearclaw and you. Bearclaw and I were getting along, but most of the game I was just shuttling ships to the front with you and fishdish.
You made me destroy one of my best planets to prevent it from falling into your clutches.
It’s interesting-- that’s not the mental map I had for the galaxy at all. I thought it was more horizontally oriented.
Edit: And I’d really like to know how many ships were in @Mark_Weston 's fleet with the scrambler that ended up at Dello.
I thought that was a lot of fun. Is it perfect? No. Was I thinking hard? Yes. :-)
I was looking forward to how my 1320 ships (Blue) were going to do against Pink’s 690 ships. I was about to launch the big attack.
I think “trench warfare” and “babysitting” were two good analogies used by others.
I’m probably more annoyed by the game than you. It was nice to have someone to attack until I learned that it was a bummer to fight at all in the game.
A tip. I think I see @arrendek do this also (lots of dotted lines between his stars). The dots are the automated loops that I had lots of unimportant carriers bringing ships from one production hub (the triangles) up to the front. I would then invest in Smugglers (bonus speed) if I needed them to move faster. I did not have to set any manual move orders to accumulate ships at a front. And if there were multiple fronts, I could just re-point the automation to aggregate ships in other areas.
Congrats @Mark_Weston on the win! 32 stars is a lot (the average size was 20 per player). How much of that was taken from Janster?
I think BearClaw (@RothdaTheTruculent ?) is a serious winner here. Look at that awful position but yet played expertly.
Also it’s a good thing I wasn’t close to Canuck, I had told myself right from the beginning of the game that there could be only one orange and I was going to attack on sight. :D
But you said we were back to being at peace! :0
More seriously, my hope was that A) once I saw your launch and your target destination, I could build another warp gate or two and quickly shuttle another ~400 of my ships to the target location and then B) place down another War Machine or a Destroyer to get improved odds. I think I probably could have held off that incoming wave of 1300, though the one after that might have finally crashed through my defenses.
Thank you! But it was mostly luck that I was not completely dog-piled. Even with that luck I was still on a course for eventual doom; I had to keep ships stationed at every border to deter aggression, but because of that I never really had enough free ships that I could concentrate on one front in order to attack and expand. I realized my error about 4 days into this mess & it was just sort of keeping the Ottoman empire tottering along after that point.
